Pace Bunny widget for summary page (Read 1192 times)

Since joining RA I have become a bit of a bunny addict. This addiction manifests itself in a couple of ways;

Every year I end up joining two or three "Pace Bunny" group to help me with my running consistency and give some stretch goals.

After logging every run (yep, pretty much every run) I flick through to the user group section to check my progress against the wascally wabbits. If a runner happens to be outside the top 25, as I often am, this becomes quite the click-fest.

I would love to see a Pace Bunny widget for the summary page that would show my total against the 2 or 3 bunnies I am chasing as well as a little info about what still needs to be done.

You got talent! You should help me scope out some of the requests I have on the list ;-)

This feature you're proposing, is it just to summarize the pace groups that you belong to, or allow you to create your own bunny for your log? I'm leaning toward the latter because there should only be 1 distance you're aiming for. Along the same vein, maybe it should be expanded to allow other goals as well, and not just distance. After all, they're all similar.

This feature you're proposing, is it just to summarize the pace groups that you belong to, or allow you to create your own bunny for your log? I'm leaning toward the latter because there should only be 1 distance you're aiming for. Along the same vein, maybe it should be expanded to allow other goals as well, and not just distance. After all, they're all similar.

The one I was proposing here was definitely the former. For a few reasons:

I thought the majority of the "bunny code" and back-end database structure might already exist and this would just be a case of calling up the relevant bits in a widget.

Like I said - bunny addict. I join 3 pace groups a year! Example for 2012: 1000 miles - must hit this, even if my legs fall off. 2000km - my target group (if I could only have one, this would be it). 1367 - stretch target. I like to see how I am doing against each of these "goals". Sad, but true.

Setting goals specific to me; eg - workouts/distance/time per week/month/year on a per user basis would be awesome (and I do have some ideas for how that would look, at least to me!) but I assumed that would be much more involved and not so easy to implement.

Shouldn't you have one distance goal per time period? It doesn't make sense to me to have multiple distances because there's only one you're shooting for. I do like the details you put in though. Creating a goal widget is not hard. The hard part is coming up with something that can satisfy everyone's needs.

I've been mulling over a goals widget and maybe now would be the time for me to create it. I can generalize the goals to the following types

- total distance (run 1000 miles in 2012)

- total duration (run 300 minutes this month)

- weight loss/gain (lose 3 pounds in the next month)

- workout frequency (4 runs or 5 workouts a week)

- workout duration (workout at least 30 minutes a day)

- workout distance (run at least 1 mile a day)

I'm not sure how to do the last two yet, although it should be similar to what I did for the streakers. Are there any other goals that I should add? Once I know what need to be done, then the next step would be coming up with the look and feel. And after that, it should be trivial to create.

What I would find useful is to be able to add line item -- be they distance goals or other RA members -- and define the time period. Then you would have flexibility...chase a mileage number, another pal here on RA, etc. It would have been of great utility in the little wager mentioned in my sig as well as lots of other examples I can think of.

"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand

To close out on the pace bunny widget request from my side (meaning I'll stop harping on after this post!) ...

I still think it has value and would probably couch it this way:

Yep I agree, I guess you should probably only have one distance goal per time period, for me that'd be 2000km for 2012. However people do join multiple pace groups for a bunch of reasons:

they were in one pace group for a while and while they may have moved up their target distance they still enjoy the forums in a particular pace group

if their training changes through the year they may step up the target mid year to see if they can beat the next bunny

the swamp

.... and because the bunnies are there it would be nice to see progress against one or more bunnies as a widget on the summary page, regardless of other goals.

In short - you got me hooked on these damn bunny things.... let me put them on my summary page!

If "goals" are coming down the pipe sooner rather than later, that's cool - I will try and put my thoughts down on that too but I would still request a Pace Bunny widget as a feature somewhere on "the list" even if it's pretty close to the bottom!

I can certainly see the use for tracking multiple people, but summing their distances is such a specific case that I doubt it'll be used by anyone else. I'll see what I can with this.

I'm not sure if I understand you right, but I would respectfully challenge the assumption that someone pitting themselves against someone else on RA is a rare occurrence. Certainly in forums with pace bunnies, people already regularly pick out others on the same bunny page and track themselves against them. The ability to bring this into a widget on one's own log page would be very useful and motivating. Also, it would not then be restricted to the people and fixed annual timeframe or people who belong to the same bunny-enabled page. (Yes, the bunnies are VERY addicting -- and motivating.)

Don't get me wrong, I've lived fine without it. But I certainly would use it. If you need to gauge interest before putting time into this I will raise my hand to do some homework and find out if others would find this useful before you dedicate your time to it. It seems like given the existing infrastructure it should not be a big deal but I am also very ignorant of what it would take to do this so I will not assume it to be a simple thing for you and request it without being willing to gauge the interest for you.

Merry Christmas eric .

"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand

I'm not sure if I understand you right, but I would respectfully challenge the assumption that someone pitting themselves against someone else on RA is a rare occurrence.

I can help the homework: I'd love to pit myself against others. Like spaniel, I don't know how much work this would imply for you, though, eric--wish I could offer some meaningful help!

"When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem." Emil Zatopek

I can certainly see the use for tracking multiple people, but summing their distances is such a specific case that I doubt it'll be used by anyone else. I'll see what I can with this.

Not to speak for Eric, but what I think he meant was the fact that spaniel is currently tracking the combined mileage of two RAers as a goal rather than competing against the mileage of a single RAer. Most users would be competing against one or more other individuals rather than the sum of their combined mileage. What spaniel is doing is just plain silly.

Not to speak for Eric, but what I think he meant was the fact that spaniel is currently tracking the combined mileage of two RAers as a goal rather than competing against the mileage of a single RAer. Most users would be competing against one or more other individuals rather than the sum of their combined mileage. What spaniel is doing is just plain silly.

Ah. If that's it, I would not expect the widget to do that, I did not mean to imply that. I think I can add two numbers myself.

"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand

Ah. If that's it, I would not expect the widget to do that, I did not mean to imply that. I think I can add two numbers myself.

Yes, I mean adding up two or more people's distances and displaying the sum as one number.

I like the whole teams thing though. Like everything else, I have no problem creating it if there's a demand for it. I think it would be a widget for the groups instead of individuals.

MattJ: you'll be getting your bunny widget once I'm done with my current project. I'm making a whole bunch of changes that if I don't upload soon, will turn into a major release. It'll probably be a major release... Anyway, if you provide me with the screen layouts, that would help immensely. I have an idea of what it (the goals) would look like, but would like to get feedback because I don't get everything right the first time.

MattJ: you'll be getting your bunny widget once I'm done with my current project. I'm making a whole bunch of changes that if I don't upload soon, will turn into a major release. It'll probably be a major release... Anyway, if you provide me with the screen layouts, that would help immensely. I have an idea of what it (the goals) would look like, but would like to get feedback because I don't get everything right the first time.

Thanks Eric! Right now I have a honey do list as long as my arm and Performance Reviews to write at work (I know, I know tears of sympathy right?), how soon do you need the layouts?

Spaniel, rgilbert or rabutler, or anyone else - I had not considered the "challenge" aspect of this in the stuff I had pulled together so far but was thinking it through while I was plodding along this morning and wondered; do you see the challenges, whether it is one RA user against others or teams of RA users against other teams, as being purely distance based i.e. would the only challenges be

the first team or individual to reach a certain distance

the team or individual to cover the most distance in a fixed time frame?

or would there be others that may be time, pace, weight(?) related? How do you see it working?